Couple serious about stolen valor

A former Kalispell resident who has spent years developing a database of verified military award recipients has been in the national limelight lately.

Doug Sterner, a Vietnam War veteran and two-time Bronze Star recipient, and his wife Pam, whose college paper became the blueprint for the Stolen Valor Act signed into law in 2006, have been interviewed extensively by the national news media as the U.S. Supreme Court last week debated the federal law she helped create.

The Stolen Valor Act makes it a crime to falsely make a verbal, written or physical claim to a military award or decoration. The high court heard arguments in what essentially is a free speech dispute involving a California man who falsely said he’d earned the Medal of Honor.

Doug Sterner was born in Kalispell and except for a brief period in Grants Pass, Ore., lived most of his youth in the Flathead Valley. 

He attended grade schools in Kalispell, seventh grade in Somers, and after living two years out of state returned to Kalispell for his sophomore year at Flathead High School. He graduated from Lincoln County High School in Eureka in 1968 and attended one semester at Flathead Valley Community College before enlisting in the Army in 1969.

“I got the Daily Inter Lake all the time I was in Vietnam,” Sterner said in a phone interview on Thursday.  “And I delivered the Inter Lake on the east side [of Kalispell] when I was in the fourth and fifth grade.”

He served as a combat engineer in the Army from 1970 to 1972 and wrote a letter to the editor of the Inter Lake in 1971 defending the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, calling those soldiers “some of the bravest and most aggressive soldiers I have ever seen.” He took issue with news accounts that inferred the Vietnamese soldiers would have been helpless without American air power.

Even in high school, Sterner was weighing in on military issues. A news story in the Pueblo, Colo., Chieftain noted how as a student in the 1960s he believed strongly in U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia and wasn't afraid to say so.

“When his history class was given an assignment to write two pages pro and two pages con on the Vietnam issue, Sterner turned in two pages con and 48 pages pro,” Chieftain reporter Scott Smith wrote.

"The teacher in that class was anti-Vietnam War, but he gave me 200 out of a possible 50 points," Sterner told the reporter.  "And I remember what he wrote on my paper: 'Doug, I disagree with your premise on this, but herein lies the spirit of American greatness. Don't ever lose what you've got.'"

After Sterner returned home after the war, he met his wife in Missoula and worked at Montana State Prison for three years before they eventually settled in Pueblo, Colo. until two years ago when they relocated to Alexandria, Va.

He continues to work on the database of military awards as curator for the Military Times’ Hall of Valor. Sterner’s mission is to expose people who lie about their military service and awards.

While only 45 people have been prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act, Sterner’s research has turned up more than 2,000 people who have lied about their military awards.

At the heart of the Supreme Court case is whether or not to uphold the Stolen Valor Act. Since it was passed, the law has been questioned by free speech proponents who argue that inflating or lying about one’s military awards is free speech and safeguarded by the U.S. Constitution.

An Associated Press story said civil liberties groups, writers, publishers and many news media outlets — including the Associated Press — have told Supreme Court justices they worry the law and the Obama administration’s defense of it could lead to more attempts by government to regulate speech.

Veterans groups support the administration’s defense of the law.

Sterner said he went into Wednesday’s court hearing “with butterflies” but afterwards felt “cautiously optimistic” the Stolen Valor Act will be upheld.

Pam Sterner wrote her paper, “Stolen Valor,” for a political science course at Colorado State University after she overheard Doug talking on the phone to an FBI agent about a case of stolen valor, an Army private who boasted he’d earned two Silver Stars, a Distinguished Service Cross, two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart for military service in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia and Iraq. 

None of it was true.

"The way that I see this, and the reason why I wrote the paper that became this law is that I see this more as an impersonation, as a fraud issue, than a freedom of speech issue,” Pam said in an interview with Public Radio International. "You cannot impersonate a police officer. You cannot impersonate a judge. You ought not to be able to impersonate a veteran, somebody who has served our country honorably."

The Sterners have been interviewed by a wide swath of national news media, including CNN, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, AARP Magazine, and several others.

Doug told AARP Magazine he finds the First Amendment free speech argument bogus.

“Stolen valor isn’t a crime of lying,” he said in the AARP article. “It’s one of impersonation. There’s a huge leap from the harmless, ‘That dress makes you look thin’ to the heinous ‘I was wounded in Iraq.’”

By 2008 he had cataloged 130,000 military award recipients. It was then Military Times offered financial assistance by buying the database and making him curator.

This week Sterner will testify at a hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that will address the fabrication of military service records and awards by those who fraudulently seek to obtain personal and professional benefit. 

“The hearing is something I’ve been working at for six years,” he said, “for Congress to mandate a complete database of every man and woman in history who had received any military award. This is an extension of my current work to build that database for Military Times.”

The database includes two of his classmates from the Lincoln County High Class of 1968, one of whom was killed in Vietnam, he noted.

Military Times recently provided Sterner with an online blog for the Hall of Valor. Visit www.militarytimes.com/blogs/hall-of-valor. Those interested can see the database progress, information on levels of completion, numbers and statistics, as well as interesting citations and personal stories he has uncovered.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.